goal for this quarter:

work thru the messiness!

terms:

POPULAR

CULTURE

• as process

• history

• as evidence

• artifacts

• as practice/performance

• functional item in a person’s life

“popular culture is meaningless” – Tony Bennett

Clifford Goertz: “simply the ensemble of stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

useful book: Keywords: A vocabulary of Culture & Society, 1976, Raymond williams

class generated definitions:

popular:

• inferior (elitist notion)

• well liked (populist notion)

• meant to be liked

• created with the specific intent of being well-received

• art is intentional

• meant to be consumed (capitalist notion)

• made by the people (pop)

• made for the people (pop)

• made by the people for the people (!)

popular culture:

• the stuff people really like

• mass culture

• not “high culture”

• viral

HEGEMONY – coined by Antonio Gramsci, who stated that

• popular culture was a battlefield between dominant and underrepresented culture

• “ a culture that only emerged following INDUSTRIALIZATION & URBANIZATION”

writing workshop:

PROPOSALS & LITERARY TECHNIQUE

←————-story exists on a continuum————->

narration is the telling of the story

the text is the vessel for narration

the personal essay is not equal to the five paragraph essay

start w/myself:

voice (1st person)

self & the world

self-discovery

veracity/authenticity: candid

show & tell {illustration & describing}

mutability of form

display an intellectual plot (depth)

literary terms:

SCENE: location /// an isolated moment

CHARACTER: an actor/element that exists within the scene

VOICE: the personality/style of the narration

DIALOGUE: how 2 or more characters interact with a scene/conversation

SETTING: atmosphere, time, cultural context [place////space]

CONCRETE & SPECIFIC DETAIL: one of the most important parts of writing; keeps you from wasting words

TRANSITIONS: how you move from one idea to another

RESEARCH: the facts; the credibility; the sources